Keller on Idols, Spiritual Life Preservers and The Myth of Control

COUNTERFEIT GODS

JONAH AND THE NINEVITES: WHEN GOOD THINGS HAPPEN TO BAD PEOPLE

AT A TIME OF UNPRECEDENTED POLITICAL, FINANCIAL AND CULTURAL upheaval in our country and world --- as people of all stripes become more polarized along national, ideological and religious and even racial lines---it might behoove those of us professing a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and even those who don't, to review a chapter from Tim Keller's recently released book called The Hidden Idols of our Lives.

Here, Keller unpacks the staggering story of Jonah in the Old Testament. Be forewarned, it's not your 1st grade Sunday school myth of a man who falls out of a boat into the sea during a storm, spends three days in the belly of a big fish and is finally belched safely onto dry land after disobeying a direct order from God. No, the story speaks to the reasons for Jonah's disobedience and to the deep idols in his heart that caused him to run from God in the first place.

Jonah had been commanded to go preach God's impending judgment to Nineveh, the world's most powerful city and seat of the Assyrian Empire, so its people might repent and be saved. This didn't suit Jonah's idea of how things ought to be. How dare God do such a merciful, kind thing to Israel's enemies!

Jonah would have none of it so he ran away in disobedience. Needless to say, God stepped in to discipline Jonah in supernatural ways. Jonah's illusion of control, his clannish superiority and desire to leverage God's will to suit his own little agenda was soon turned upside down several times.

But the story doesn't end there. A great struggle ensues between Jonah and God after Jonah goes to Nineveh and the people there end up repenting. Jonah gets furious with God---furious enough to die--- because God, the God of the Jews, would dare show such compassion and mercy on the Ninevites whom he hated. His religious and national pride, all good things in and of themselves, had become ultimate things---idols---which Jonah had put before obeying and loving God.

Jonah is a large, deep book of the Bible which could aptly be titled Advanced Idol Worship of Grownups--- or When Good Things Happen to Bad People--- which under Keller's eye-popping commentary takes a piercing look at both the personal and national idols that intersect every human heart, including yours and mine. Jonah had multiple idols, and God dealt with all of them, albeit very slowly over time.

It's a shocking and poignant tale for today's turbulent times and us arrogant peoples when Keller gets his skilled hands on this famous Bible story.

Keller writes of Jonah: His fear of personal failure (of preaching and ministering to the Ninevites), his pride in his Jewish religion and his fierce love of Israel had coalesced into a deadly idolatrous compound that spiritually blinded him to the grace of God. As a result he did not want to extend that grace to an entire city that needed it. He wanted to see them all dead.....

Racial pride and cultural narrowness cannot coexist with the gospel of grace. They are mutually exclusive.....Because of the self-justifying nature of the human heart, it is natural to see our own culture or class characteristics (or our own political or economic ideologies, I might add) as superior to anyone else. But this natural tendency is arrested by the gospel.

This is not an over-night job for God with either Jonah or you and me. Keller quotes Richard Loveless on spiritual life preservers from The Dynamics of Spiritual Life:

Those who are not secure in Christ cast about for spiritual life preservers with which to support their confidence, and in their frantic search they cling not only to the shreds of ability and righteousness they find in themselves, but they fix upon their race, their membership, their familiar in a party, their familiar social and ecclesiastical patterns and their culture as a means of self-recommendation. The culture is put on as through it were armor against self-doubt, but it becomes a mental strait-jacket which cleaves to the flesh and can never be removed except through comprehensive faith in the saving work of Christ.

The story of Jonah is a story I can identify with. It convicts me of the multiple layers of my idolatries and asks me to examine my heart early and often for racial, political and ideological pride that would cause me to look down in superiority and marginalize people with differing views. It calls me to do what I can in any situation yet know in the depths of my heart that in the beginning, middle and end, God is in control. There's a much bigger picture unfolding than I can see. I, like Jonah, may not like what I see unfolding in our country. After all's said and done, I'm called to obey God and leave the results up to Him without taking on a false sense of superiority, thinking my position is always right or that I'm in control.

More in the weeks ahead. Love this mighty little book! It has the potential of being a searing flashlight in the heart of anyone who reads it and is willing to look at their own depravity. Again, not for the faint-of-heart.

(Please note, I intended to write today about the idols of family---my personal favorite--- in Keller's book, but with the news late last night the health care bill ( which I oppose on many grounds) passed its first hurdle in the Senate I decided this was a more timely subject for me to focus on today. It's something I need for continuing to look at my own idol of moral superiority of being a fiscal conservative on the political right. We often read and write what we need to learn. )